Columnists

North Carolina’s historic 2013 tax reform is once again under attack, and once again the critics are using misleading claims and false narratives to deceive the public. Based on a flawed report produced by the N.C. Justice Center’s Budget & Tax Center, new ads falsely claim...

From ash pond, to river, to your bloodstream. When you have finished drinking this bottle of water, fill it with our tap water for liquid refreshment that tastes as good and is just as pure as what was in the bottle. That was the message from the City of Wilmington’s proud and...

One of the more bitter fights that occurred in the North Carolina General Assembly last year involved whether lawmakers should repeal a 2007 requirement that electricity suppliers get a portion of their power from renewable sources of energy. North Carolina is one of 27 states...

As state transportation officials take up the knotty issue of how to pay for roads in the future, they better first understand the political thicket in which state legislators have left them. Members of the state Board of Transportation (BOT) again this week discussed how North...

One of the biggest flashpoints in the ongoing national debate over immigration policy centers is on the matter of drivers’ licenses. To anti-immigrant groups and those who champion mass deportations, the idea of providing driver’s licenses to undocumented individuals is anathema....

A stunning report by the State Board of Elections has revealed clear voter fraud in the 2012 election — evidently in tens of thousands of instances. The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBOE) reported last week to the Joint Legislative Elections Oversight Committee on the...

D uring most of its history, North Carolina was a state of widely dispersed residents. There were no truly big cities, many small towns and fewer sparsely populated counties than, say, Virginia or Georgia had. Particularly along the state’s rivers and streams, you’d find a...

by John Hood Congress should give President Barack Obama more power — when it comes to the issue of free trade, that is. Conservatives and constitutionalists are rightly concerned about recent arrogations or abuse of power by the executive branch. They should demand greater...

by Scott Mooneyham In Congress, the drama of a committee hearing where lawmakers get into confrontational question-and-answer sessions with those testifying before them are not so unusual. In the North Carolina General Assembly, that kind of contentiousness is rare. Any...

by Scott Mooneyham Since North Carolina legislators first approved the State Ethics Act in 2006, policymakers and political observers have continued to discuss to what extent state law should control the revolving door between government and the private sector. The problems...

by Bob Luebke On June 2, 2010, the North Carolina State Board of Education adopted Common Core Standards. The standards emerged out of a national discussion over the decline in the value of a high school diploma and growing concern over America’s poor performance on international...

by Brian Balfour In a recent interview with WebMD (webmd.com), President Obama admitted that yet another of the promises used to sell the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — to the American public turns out to be a lie. In the interview, he confessed that some Americans might have...